The 1910 Los Angeles Times Bombing
At 1:07 a.m. on 1 October 1910, dynamite exploded beside the Los Angeles Times building. The blast and fast-moving fire killed twenty-one people working on the morning edition. James B. McNamara later pleaded guilty to murder, while his brother John J. McNamara admitted another bombing in a nationwide campaign tied to an ironworkers' union.
What existed before
Los Angeles employers promoted an aggressively nonunion 'open shop,' and Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis used the paper against organized labor. Across the country, structural ironworkers were conducting a clandestine dynamite campaign against nonunion projects. That context explains the target without making the newspaper workers responsible for it.
Trigger and cause
James McNamara placed a timed suitcase bomb in Ink Alley beside the Times building, near printing supplies and gas lines. Its explosion tore through the structure and ignited a fire. Workers were trapped by smoke, flames, an elevator shaft, and inadequate escape routes.
Aftermath
The Times immediately blamed unions, while labor organizations initially argued that gas had caused the blast. Detective William Burns traced dynamite operations to the McNamaras and Ortie McManigal. Defense attorney Clarence Darrow negotiated guilty pleas after the evidence strengthened and was later tried, but acquitted, on one jury-bribery charge.
Why it matters
The twenty-one victims were workers killed at their jobs, even though the target was an antiunion institution. Remembering that distinction resists both anti-labor propaganda and any romantic account of a bombing that predictably placed ordinary people in mortal danger.
Uncertainty note
The accepted institutional count is twenty-one deaths, though some older accounts use different totals. The explosion's dynamite origin and James McNamara's responsibility are established by evidence and his plea; debate concerns intent, the fire's propagation, and the conduct of investigators and attorneys, not whether the attack occurred.